The Human Person

The Human Person

''Nothing is more wondrous than a human being

when he begins to discover himself"

(Chinese Proverb)

Who is the human person? This is the question that sometimes very hard to answer, and this term is being less employed. Let us first define the meaning of person; the word person from the Latin word "persona", meaning mask. The mask hid the face of the actor and made the voice resound loudly, thus it meant also as personage, he who is represented through the mask of actor. As the time goes by different concept and meaning of person had been raised by many philosophers. In psychology, a person is a being capable of self perception, and that which he does is no other than to develop the element of "rational nature" contained in important truths in the order of phenomenology and morals but they characterize immediately that which distinguishes the person from things, that is, his openness.

Far more than other creatures, Man have the capacity to be "many things to many people" as the situations calls for it; that sometimes we are force to be different "persons" or wear different masks, because we don't want to show to others our own self.

Some of us become quite adept at putting on masks or switching masks; thus we can ensure that we always have ready a persona that is acceptable, because through this its affects minimal rejection by many other group or person.

But the price we pay is very dear. In the process of switching masks, we may discover that there is nothing but masks; indeed, they may begin to feel familiar and genuine, all of them. It is not uncommon to make the discovery during the personal crisis that an authentic self never developed, because during those times we are always hiding in that mask. The feelings that one does not know "who he is" may be intuited by ourselves and inferred by others, but it is perhaps the last thing that we will confess to ourselves or others. The pain that our masks cover is too great for anyone to see. We can't risk being open because we are afraid of what others will say. We are fearful that someone might see beneath our masks and discover just nothing.

One thing is really sure, that we need to be open in order to discover more ourselves, because nothing is more wondrous than a human being when he begins to discover himself.